A Study of Direct and Inverse Problems in Force Sensing of Elastic Bodies

The estimation of contact forces in elastic bodies leads to an inverse problem, and its solution procedure is different as compared to a direct problem. This paper discusses how a direct problem becomes an inverse problem and how these problems depend on boundary conditions of the elastic bodies. A cantilever beam for different boundary conditions is also investigated in the framework of finite element method. The numerical results show how a problem becomes direct or inverse for different boundary conditions. They also indicate the extreme sensitivity of forces to the input data for both direct and inverse problems.